Apple iPhone 11 Camera Catches Up to Google Pixel (on Paper)

Apple's latest iPhone sports its own take on the Google Pixel Night Sight. As usual, Apple promises that its cameras are the best, but only real-world testing will tell us if that's true.

If you believe Apple, its latest iPhone offers the best camera ever. But doesn't Tim Cook make that promise every year? I've only had a chance to look at the specs and marketing materials for the latest iPhone 11, but I have some thoughts on its new features and promised performance. As always, I won't pretend to render a verdict on its performance until I've had a chance to try out myself.

Two or Three Cameras, Depending on Price

Apple has ditched the confusing XR, XS, and XS Max monikers, and will release three versions of the iPhone 11: the basic iPhone 11, with two cameras and a 6.1-inch screen; or the more expensive iPhone 11 Pro with its triple camera array in your choice of a 5.8- or 6.5-inch LCD. All three versions omit a home button and include a front notch, just like last year's iPhone XS family.

The basic iPhone 11, starting at $699, includes wide-angle (26mm equivalent) and ultra-wide (13mm equivalent) lenses. With the 11 Pro, starting at $999, you also get the 52mm "telephoto" lens. Anyone who has picked up a real camera knows that a 52mm lens is actually a standard, or normal, angle, but Apple's marketing department has never felt restricted by accepted terminology.

The wide and standard lenses are pretty much known quantities. Apple says they've been improved from previous versions, but the tiny lenses and minuscule sensors that back them don't allow a lot of room for vast leaps forward in optical performance. Apple can go on and on about factory calibration, but we're talking about tiny plastic lenses here. We're not dealing with complex optical designs you find in interchangeable lenses for full-frame mirrorless camera systems.

The ultra-wide lens, with its 13mm-equivalent angle of view, is intriguing. We've seen other phones go ultra-wide, but I've yet to see one that delivers excellent images. If Apple has a design that avoids extreme barrel distortion—the effect that makes some ultra-wide phone lenses draw images with a modest fish-eye look—it may have something here. We'll see!

Separating Features From Gimmicks

Wheat, chaff, features, gimmicks. It's all the same with an iPhone launch. Let's talk about a gimmick first. The iPhone 11 Pro can record video with all three of its lenses simultaneously, which could be interesting if you're using the phone for a documentary or film project, but just seems less than useful to me.

Thankfully, that was the only highlighted feature that screamed less-than-useful to me. Other multi-camera tricks, like syncing up white balance and exposure settings on all of the lenses—so you won't get jarring changes when switching lenses—is certainly a good thing, even if it's happening behind the scenes.

Night mode, Apple's take on Google's class-leading Night Shot, will make or break the iPhone's camera. If it lives up to its promise, sharpshooters will enjoy better images in dim light than you can expect with older iPhones. If Night mode is as good as Night Shot, it will compete with dedicated cameras with 1-inch and Micro Four Thirds format sensors. But will it?

I have no clue. It looks like it works in a similar way. Instead of trying to take one long exposure, which requires both camera and subject to remain perfectly still, or pushing the ISO so far that images become a noisy mess, Night mode snaps a huge number of short exposures in fast sequence. It uses computational tricks, presumably coupled with the phone's accelerometer and the camera's image stabilization system, to cut out motion blur.

If it works as promised, you'll get images with better color and detail, even in very dim light. But we're waiting to test the phone to see if it lives up to the marketing. (All of the images in this story were provided by Apple.)

The other things you're used to are there. Portrait mode gets a new lighting effect, High Key Light Mono, for black-and-white images. There's a new pre-shot buffer mode for action shots, similar to what we've seen in dedicated cameras from Olympus, Fujifilm, and others.

Video recording is an option, too. The iPhone 11 supports 4K capture at up to 60fps, and the two tighter lenses offer optical stabilization. The ultra-wide lens doesn't, but digital stabilization is typically quite effective for wide scenes. We'll see how it compares with tech like GoPro's HyperSmooth and DJI's RockSteady digital stabilization when we test it.

Apple Is Seldom First

Apple doesn't usually blaze trails with new imaging technology. If you're an iPhone owner, you'll just have to live with being slightly behind Google and Samsung when it comes to the latest features. Google had wide-angle images with bokeh before the iPhone XR, and the latest Samsung Galaxy Note can even mimic a shallow depth of field when recording video. If I want to do the same thing with a Sony a7R III, I need to reach for lens with a fast f-stop.

About the Author

Senior digital camera analyst for the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team, Jim Fisher is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he concentrated on documentary video production. Jim's interest in photography really took off when he borrowed his father's Hasselblad 500C and light meter in 2007.

He honed his writing skills at retailer B&H Photo, where he wrote thousands upon thousands of product descriptions, blog posts, and reviews. Since then he's shot with hundreds of camera models, ranging from pocket point-and-shoots to medium format digital cameras. And he's reviewed almost all of them. When he's not testing cameras and gear for PCMag, he's likely out and about shooting with … See Full Bio